Only Children (53 page)

“What was it, Luke?” Daddy’s voice got close, right in Luke’s ear.

“Nothing,” Luke mumbled. Daddy left. Luke held the PlayDoh in his hand. He wanted to make a sailboat, like the sailboat in Maine, just right outside his window, quiet and tall, slicing the sky. He pushed the cool, soft PlayDoh, watched his fingers disappear. Shape round and smooth here and long there. He pulled a piece up—

“This is good, you know why?” Luke explained to Byron. “I’m making a sailboat, like the sailboat in Maine. And it’s blue and white. And those are the colors I have!” This was great.

“No,” Byron scolded. “No, you’re not. You’re making Ram Man.”

The sail rose up thin and blue from the chunk of PlayDoh. Luke let it go—his boat was ready!

“You’re doing it wrong!” Byron’s hand crushed the sail, smashed the boat. “You have to make Ram Man.”

It was gone. He had made it so great. And now it was gone. He hated Byron. He wanted to throw him in the garbage and put his many colors in there too. “I—don’t—I—don’t—” but Luke couldn’t move the words through his feelings, couldn’t push them out.

The tears were here, hurting and pushing his eyes, poking and hurting, everything wanting out—

“Byron! What have you done?”

“I was just playing and Luke smashed his thing and cried!”

“Luke.” Daddy in his ear, pushing to get in, but everything wants to come out. “Luke, what is it?”

“Byron!” His mommy was going to yell and yell and break everything. “Are you—”

“Really, Mommy, he cries. He cries a lot. Like a baby.”

“Oh, and you never cry,” Byron’s mommy said.

“Luke, what happened? You couldn’t make what you wanted?” Daddy in his ear, buzzing like a loud television.

“I wanna go home,” Luke said to push them away. “I wanna go home!”

“Don’t go home, Luke,” Byron said, and he began to yell and cry. “I want to keep playing.”

“It’s past your bedtimes,” his mommy said.

“No!” Byron cried now.

Good. Make him cry.

“I wanna go home,” Luke said, now clear, able to push them away.

“Okay,” Daddy said. “We’ll go home right now.”

“No!” Byron smashed his stupid He-Man and pushed all the PlayDoh off the table.

“Byron!” His mommy grabbed him and pulled him away.

Good. Good.

“Let’s get your jacket, Luke.”

Good. Daddy and me. We’ll go home. Mommy will come late, and even if I’m sleeping, she’ll give me a kiss, and tomorrow I can make my sailboat alone.

“Y
OU GET
skinnier every day,” Sal said with a sneer on his lips. He must think it makes him look sexy, Nina thought. Where did he get that idea? Elvis was before his time.

“Thank you,” Nina answered. Where to go to eat? She had exhausted everything nearby—she’d end up at that coffee shop Luke had thought so magical. The food was terrible, but being there brought the memory of Luke along for company.

“But enough is enough,” Sal said. “I’m going to lunch with you to make sure you get some fat on you.”

“So I can look like your mother?” Nina asked.

Sal seemed bewildered by her joke. Nina could throw him so easily. He was funny, with his tough manner and skin so thin he might be a two-year-old. “What does that mean?” Sal complained.

“You said your mother was a fat slob.”

“I did?” Sal blanched as if she had reminded him of the commission of a sin.

“I guess you were kidding,” Nina said.

“I don’t want you to look like my mother,” Sal said, his swagger back. He had a gleam in his eye. He means that to be a come-on. But he means everything to be a come-on. She knew, just knew, that if she ever took him at his word, he’d panic. She was a safe dangerous game.

They were outside. Sal moved in front of her. “Where do you want to go?” he bluffed, pretending confidence she would go to lunch with him.

“I didn’t say—” She stopped herself. She didn’t want to play teenage games. “I’m going to the coffee shop.”

“Ugh. How about Japanese? It’s good for you. This is New York! You have to be adventurous.”

“I’ve had Japanese food before, Sal.” She laughed at him. He worked so hard at this male mastery. “You can join me at the coffee shop.” She walked off. He didn’t come along.

At the corner, she looked back for Sal. Sal was still where she had left him, caught between his pride and his desire to come. When Luke balked at where Nina wanted to go next, Luke would do the same: bluff and stay back until she moved decisively away, and then he’d come running.

The light changed. Nina almost didn’t cross, forgetting that she could abandon Sal, he wasn’t a three-year-old. So she moved on and, once in the coffee shop, felt some regret after all.

The coffee shop was jammed and noisy. She got herself a tiny table, and as she opened the menu, Sal appeared.

“Jesus, you’re stubborn,” he said. “What are you gonna have? Burger, right?”

Then he was off and chatting, talking about his fat pregnant sisters (that’s what he called them) and about Tad. Tad seemed to be his main concern. Sal was obviously envious of Nina’s job. He repeatedly asked what she had done to get it and flatly didn’t accept her answer that Tad had simply offered it to her, presumably on the basis of her work in class.

“Come on, you must have asked him if he had any jobs?”

“No, I didn’t. Never occurred to me.”

“Come on!”

“Okay, I paid him to give it to me.”

“That’s what Rosalie thinks. That you offered to work for free.”

Rosalie was one of the pair of girls who hung on Sal’s every word, trailing him through the hallways, giggling from the thrill by his presence. Nina smiled at the thought of Rosalie’s envy. She enjoyed its novelty. When was the last time someone was jealous of what she had?

“Don’t tell her I told you,” Sal said.

“Oh, she must have wanted you to tell me.”

“No! She likes you.”

Nina laughed. Sal seemed so familiar to her. He shouldn’t—was he like Luke? Like her brother?

“Really, she does! She just said that ’cause she’s jealous.”

“It’s okay,” Nina reassured him. He was fascinated by competition, but didn’t want to admit it caused bad feelings. Who was that like? Eric?

“Is it true?” Sal asked.

“Is what true?”

“That Tad doesn’t pay you?”

Nina again laughed at him. He waited for her to stop, as if it were a commercial message interrupting his favorite show’s denouement. “He pays me. Minimum wage. He doesn’t have to pay me. Some of them aren’t paid, they’re interning. But they get school credit for that.”

“That must be what Rosalie meant.” Sal ate his hamburger in four bites, his jaw dropping like a crocodile’s and swallowing chunks. Ketchup appeared at the corner of his mouth. “What a ripoff.”

“Sal, if you want to, you can look at everything as a rip-off.”

“’Cause everything is a rip-off.”

“Then nothing is a rip-off.”

“Huh?”

“Something has to
not
be a rip-off for everything else to be. If everything is a rip-off, then everything is equally fair.”

“Oh, that’s bullshit. That’s something rich people think to make them feel better ’cause they’re doing the ripping off.”

He was like Eric, just like Eric when Nina first met him: hungry, eager to make an impression, intrigued by her, disgusted by the rules of the game he so desperately wanted to win. Only then, Nina was young, and Eric’s view of life was new, and seemed refreshing: a forest cleared of the dead brush of her family’s hypocritical values. Her family pretended winning didn’t matter to them; but they talked of nothing but who was best skier, best squash player, best sailor, and they believed winners always deserved their victories.

“Never thought of that, right?” Sal said, pleased with himself, convinced he was teaching poor naïve Nina the way of the world.

“Are you going to hate your life if you don’t make money?” Nina asked.

“You mean, if I starve?”

“No. If you don’t become rich.”

“You mean, if I have to live in the Bronx like my parents and have fat babies who grow up to have fat babies?”

Nina laughed while she nodded.

“I’ll kill myself.”

Nina shook her head. “Give me a serious answer.”

“That is a serious answer, beautiful. You know, you are beautiful.”

“You don’t have to flirt with me, Sal.”

“Hey—I mean it. I’m not playing. You
are
beautiful.”

Sal was thrilled to be saying this. He sat straight up, at attention, his eyes glistening, his nostrils open, his mouth grave. She watched him, fascinated. He was a visitation from her past—Eric wooing her. Nina had utterly believed in Eric’s passion, had believed his romance was inspired by pure love for her. She thought she had won an old-fashioned chivalrous adoration.

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” Sal said, high on his feelings, skimming on pure sentiment. “I think about you all the time. I don’t want other women; they’re impure compared to you. I wish I could touch your hair, lie next to you in bed, and hold your hand. I close my eyes and see you.” He closed his eyes and kept them shut while he talked. “It’s like you’re not even human. I’ve never seen skin like yours—and your eyes! They glow like a cat’s and see right through me.” He opened and gazed at her. “Your eyes catch me and I have to follow them. I’m yours. I love you. I used to dream about making love to you. But I think I’d be too scared. I’m not good enough. But I can’t lie. Not telling you what I feel, just pretending everything’s normal. I love you. It’s so great to say it. I love you.”

Sal sat there, erect, awaiting her judgment.

But all she could think of was Eric. Young, bedding her. Young, marrying her. Young, impregnating her. And now, in only a few years, old and harassing her. Sal just wants to fuck me, Nina thought. Confirm his escape from his neighborhood, get a visa to somewhere else. She hadn’t thought that for a second when Eric courted her. Was the difference Sal? No, Nina was older, and knew better.

I wish I didn’t, she thought. I wish I could fall in love with this boy and be fooled all over again.

W
HEN DIANE
called to invite Eric and Luke over for a late-afternoon play date, and suggested they stay and order pizza, so the boys could have their first dinner together, for a moment, Eric thought, she wants to see me alone. En route, he dismissed that idea. Sure, Diane knew Nina would be working, Eric had told her about Nina’s schedule the other day in the park, but probably her husband would also be there.

He wasn’t. Although Diane was dressed casually, she was made up and looked alluring. She immediately offered Eric wine. There was a spread of cheese and crackers out on the coffee table. There were fresh-cut flowers in several vases, there was music playing, there were no toys strewn anywhere, and she told Byron to take Luke into his room and show Luke his new toy, Snake Mountain.

“Peter working late?” Eric asked as coolly as he could.

“Yes, there’s a big opening tonight. I guess I should have gone, but I didn’t feel like it.” She had a keen edge to her voice when, as Eric knew well, by the end of the day most mothers would have given up on cheerfulness. What was so exciting about having the father of your three-year-old’s best friend over for pizza?

But it made no sense. What were they going to do—plunk the boys in front of the television, turn on a tape of He-Man, and screw in the bedroom?

Eric was grateful that Luke had managed to take a crap a few hours ago. God, what a mess. First, huge, impossibly long turds oozed out, in a slow agony, accompanied by screaming and tears, and then diarrhea followed. Luke had been stopped up for a week this time. Something had to be done. After it was over, Eric turned on the television to distract Luke and sneaked off to the bedroom to call Nina at work. Nina was irritated by the interruption. “I’ll take him to another doctor. I have to go.” And she hung up without a good-bye.

Yeah, I’d be happy to sleep with Diane. Why not? I’m just a servant for Nina, taking care of her kid, her money, her family’s affection, you name it. I make sure he gets enough sleep, I make sure Luke knows he’s loved—what if I behaved like Diane’s husband? Then we’d have an aggressive brat like Byron.

Nevertheless, Eric wished Luke had some of Byron’s public self-assurance. He didn’t think Byron was
really
more self-confident— he knew what Byron was, remembered Byron’s type from his own childhood. Byron was a shrimp who needed to be in charge or his ego would crumble. Yeah, but those shrimps always ended up dominating everyone—like Joe. They were completely concentrated on besting everyone—so they did.

No more. Eric wouldn’t allow it this time. Joe was pushing Eric at work, taking back control of the accounts merely because, for the past quarter, Eric’s stocks were down and Joe’s were up. He thinks he can just grab it back, take it out of my hands, and I won’t say anything. Well, he’s wrong. I’ll walk. I’ll walk with the fifteen million I control.

But you’re losing it, you can’t keep your grip, you may need Joe.

The whispers of doubt were terrible, sickening.

I’ll go mad if I don’t shake it. Make a decision! Leave, that’s what I have to do. Go out on my own. Otherwise Joe will always eat away at my confidence. I would have sold earlier if it weren’t for Joe—not Joe, Sammy, standing there beneath me, as I’m scared shitless on the ledge, saying, Jump! Jump!

“Do you mind Nina leaving you alone with Luke so much?” Diane asked.

“No. Most of the time, the only person I really have fun with is Luke.” Except for the constipation. If only that would go away— maybe I should ask her advice.

“Really?” She smiled with approval. “I wish Peter felt like that. I think he would if he spent more time with Byron.”

“You must enjoy it.”

“Yeah?” She laughed sarcastically.

“Well, you gave up your job to be with him.”

“No. I gave up my work to have fun. To slow down. I just blame it on Byron.”

“Smell the roses?”

“That’s right.” Diane lowered her head. “Only I don’t have anyone to smell with me.” She looked up, right into Eric’s eyes, asking the question.

He held her look.

She moved to the couch, sitting next to him, always keeping her eyes on his, bold, like Byron, demanding: I’m here, I’m here. Eric’s thoughts sped by, the ticker going wild, overloaded by volume: what do I owe Nina, do I love her, the boys are in the next room, when could I see Diane anyway, every second of my life is accounted for, I’d figure out something, but it’s crazy, right, and her tits are great, we could live together, the boys would always have playmates, but it would be bad for Luke, why am I worrying about that, this is just a lay, maybe she’s kidding—